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Open Source component-oriented Web framework used by the Brazilian Air Force, Emirates Real Estate Investment Trust, German National Library of Science and Technology, Japan National Police Agency, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Orange Moldova, Savings Banks Group Finland, Taiwan High Speed Rail, and Topicus B.V., among other organizations.

Wakefield, MA —23 April 2018— The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced today Apache® WicketTM v8.0.0, the component-oriented Web framework.

Apache Wicket is a popular component-oriented server-side Java Web framework used to build complex Web applications reaping the benefits of object oriented programming such as reusability, encapsulation and easy extensibility. With the tagline of "Write less, achieve more," the latest major release of Apache Wicket aims to help developers write even more robust, maintainable, and highly performant Web applications and Websites for governments, stores, universities, cities, banks, email providers, and more.

"Apache Wicket 8's flagship feature, support for Java 8 idioms, started off a few years ago, and allows for a really great development experience where you can achieve the same functionality in a more secure, readable way," said Martijn Dashorst, Vice President of Apache Wicket. "I think our users are going to be very happy with the benefits it brings."

Apache Wicket was initially developed in 2004 and joined The Apache Software Foundation in 2007. The project is one of the few survivors of the "Java server-side Web framework wars" of the mid 2000's —with a robust history and growing user base over the past decade, Apache Wicket remains a premier choice for Java developers across the world.

Using Apache Wicket, developers are able to build custom components easily, using normal Java idioms for extensibility and encapsulation. Wicket gives developers the ability to create complex user interfaces using just Java and HTML, and keep the applications secure and maintainable. Apache Wicket abstracts the request oriented Web technologies away and provides user interface concepts to the Java developer. So instead of thinking "requests" and "responses", developers using Wicket think "Pages", "Panels", "Buttons", "Links", "Forms" and "ListViews".

Apache Wicket 8.0.0 includes new features, bug fixes and improvements that include:

"Wicket 8 is a long awaited milestone for the project," said Andrea del Bene, Apache Wicket committer and Apache Wicket v8.0 Release Manager. "We are proud to provide all the new functionality to Web developers who can leverage Java 8 to remove many lines of code throughout their code bases. The new features are essential for modern Java developers. With Wicket 8, developers can create more maintainable and better performant applications."

"Apache Wicket always had security as one of its pillar stones. This is why we know our access management solution Topicus KeyHub has a solid foundation with Wicket," said Martijn Maatman, manager at Topicus B.V. "Wicket 8 contains new and improved features to increase security and effectiveness. This makes it our framework of choice to build software solutions that can stand the test of time."

"Apache Wicket's focus on plain Java and HTML enabled OpenMeetings to migrate from Flash to a maintainable codebase," said Maxim Solodovnik, VP of Apache OpenMeetings™ Web conferencing project. "The stability and modularity of the Wicket framework gives us the assurance our investment is not obsolete in a couple of weeks or months."

"Wicket comes with a great user guide, and with our quick-start wizard you can have your first Wicket project up and running in seconds," added Dashorst.

Catch Apache Wicket in action with live examples on the Apache Wicket Website, as well as many available recordings of presentations from JavaZone, Devoxx, and ApacheCon.

Availability and Oversight

Apache Wicket software is released under the Apache License v2.0 and is overseen by a self-selected team of active contributors to the project. A Project Management Committee (PMC) guides the Project's day-to-day operations, including community development and product releases. For downloads, documentation, and ways to become involved with Apache Wicket, visit http://wicket.apache.org/ and https://twitter.com/apache_wicket

About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)

Established in 1999, the all-volunteer Foundation oversees more than 350 leading Open Source projects, including Apache HTTP Server —the world's most popular Web server software. Through the ASF's meritocratic process known as "The Apache Way," more than 730 individual Members and 6,800 Committers across six continents successfully collaborate to develop freely available enterprise-grade software, benefiting millions of users worldwide: thousands of software solutions are distributed under the Apache License; and the community actively participates in ASF mailing lists, mentoring initiatives, and ApacheCon, the Foundation's official user conference, trainings, and expo. The ASF is a US 501(c)(3) charitable organization, funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors including Aetna, Anonymous, ARM, Bloomberg, Budget Direct, Capital One, Cerner, Cloudera, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Hortonworks, Huawei, IBM, Indeed, Inspur, LeaseWeb, Microsoft, Oath, ODPi, Pineapple Fund, Pivotal, Private Internet Access, Red Hat, Target, and Union Investment. For more information, visit http://apache.org/ and https://twitter.com/TheASF

For real-time updates, sign up for Apache-related news by sending mail to announce-subscribe@apache.org and follow @TheASF on Twitter. For a broader spectrum from the Apache community, https://twitter.com/PlanetApache provides an aggregate of Project activities as well as the personal blogs and tweets of select ASF Committers.

Community-driven conference series to gather dozens of Apache projects and their communities in Montréal to share and learn about the latest Open Source innovations in Big Data, Cloud, Finance, IoT, Machine Learning, Search, Servers, and more in a collaborative, vendor-neutral environment

Wakefield, MA —17 May 2018— The Apache® Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced today the program for its official conference series, ApacheCon™, taking place 24-27 September 2018 in Montréal, Canada.

ApacheCon showcases the latest breakthroughs from ubiquitous Apache projects and upcoming innovations in the Apache Incubator, as well as Open Source development and leading community-driven projects "The Apache Way".

"The Apache Software Foundation continues to lead in community-driven development that accelerates innovation across the Open Source ecosystem," said Rich Bowen, Vice President of Conferences at the ASF. "ApacheCon delivers state-of-the-art content, directly from Apache project developer and user communities."

Over the past 19 years, ApacheCon has drawn attendees from more than 60 countries to learn about core Open Source technologies independent of business interests, corporate biases, or sales pitches.

Cliff Schmidt, Apache Member, former ASF Board member, and Literacy Bridge founder on how Amplio uses technology to educate and improve the quality of life of people living in very difficult parts of the world.

Myrle Krantz, Apache Member and Vice President Apache Fineract, on how Open Source banking is helping the global fight against poverty.

Euan McLeod, ‎VP VIPER at ‎Comcast, on the many ways that Apache software delivers your favorite shows to your living room.

Events and Activities

ApacheCon will also feature popular sessions that include Lightning Talks, BarCampApache, Hackathon, PGP key signing, and ample networking opportunities with Apache projects and their communities.

Sponsors

ApacheCon is made possible by Platinum Sponsors Comcast and IBM; Gold Sponsor Amazon; Silver Sponsors Linode and Red Hat; and Bronze Sponsor ShapeBlue, who join Apache event sponsors CloudOps, Dito, GridGain, and Talener. Sponsorship opportunities are available for ApacheCon, as well as Apache Roadshow Berlin and Washington DC: contact help@apachecon.com for further details.

Venue

ApacheCon North America 2018 will be held at the Montréal Marriott Chateau Champlain in Montréal, Canada. ApacheCon has secured room blocks with special rates for sleeping rooms ($225 CAD per night, including WiFi) available through 24 August.

Registration

Registration for ApacheCon is open. Early registration incentives include savings of $225 off the general rate of $800 through 21 July, as well as special discounts for Apache Committers.

Members of the media and analyst community who would like to reserve a complimentary press pass to ApacheCon should contact Sally Khudairi at press@apache.org.

About ApacheCon

ApacheCon is the official global conference series of The Apache Software Foundation. Since 2000 ApacheCon has been drawing participants at all levels to explore ”Tomorrow’s Technology Today” across 300+ Apache projects and their diverse communities. ApacheCon showcases the latest developments in ubiquitous Apache projects and emerging innovations through hands-on sessions, keynotes, real-world case studies, trainings, hackathons, community events, and more. For more information, visit http://apachecon.com/ and https://twitter.com/ApacheCon .

About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)

Established in 1999, the all-volunteer Foundation oversees more than 350 leading Open Source projects, including Apache HTTP Server —the world's most popular Web server software. Through the ASF's meritocratic process known as "The Apache Way," more than 680 individual Members and 6,500 Committers across six continents successfully collaborate to develop freely available enterprise-grade software, benefiting millions of users worldwide: thousands of software solutions are distributed under the Apache License; and the community actively participates in ASF mailing lists, mentoring initiatives, and ApacheCon, the Foundation's official user conference, trainings, and expo. The ASF is a US 501(c)(3) charitable organization, funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors including Aetna, Alibaba Cloud Computing, ARM, Baidu, Bloomberg, Budget Direct, Capital One, Cash Store, Cerner, Cloudera, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Hortonworks, Huawei, IBM, Indeed, Inspur, iSIGMA, ODPi, LeaseWeb, Microsoft, PhoenixNAP, Pivotal, Private Internet Access, Red Hat, Target, Union Investment, and Yahoo. For more information, visit http://apache.org/ and https://twitter.com/TheASF

For real-time updates, sign up for Apache-related news by sending mail to announce-subscribe@apache.org and follow @TheASF on Twitter. For a broader spectrum from the Apache community, https://twitter.com/PlanetApache provides an aggregate of Project activities as well as the personal blogs and tweets of select ASF Committers.

Like other recent contributors to this blog, I am not a developer by trade. My day job is as a Linux Systems Engineer and team manager, and, truth be told, my programming skills are not something I would rely on to make a living. Despite these facts, I've found something beyond acceptance in being a part of the Apache Guacamole project: mentoring.

Most of my experience with The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has been with retrieving the Apache Web Server (httpd) http://httpd.apache.org/ from the download page, and getting involved with the ASF was more accidental than anything else. I've brushed arms with the Guacamole project http://guacamole.apache.org/ at several times over the past decade. As a systems administrator/engineer, and one who prefers Linux to some of the commercial alternatives, I'm always happy to see software produced that is truly cross-platform, and, as many current trends are demonstrating, Web browser applications are the pinnacle of cross-platform applications. I used Guacamole in various applications in my place of employment, but always saw opportunities to improve it – add a feature here or there, make it more administrator or user friendly, etc.

After a recent job change, I found myself with a little more free time than I had previously had, and a desire to do something productive with that time. I started thinking about how I could give back to the Open Source community – I've long been a user of many software packages made freely-available to the world, and my appreciation for the developers and companies that produce and support these efforts had, for a while, made me want to do something to return the favor and give back to that community. I also needed to challenge myself and fill some of my free time, and growing my programming skills seemed like a good way to accomplish these goals.

When I settled on Guacamole, I found that it had entered into the Apache Incubator http://incubator.apache.org/ programming in an effort to get the project accepted by The Apache Software Foundation. I thought that was cool, but didn’t think much else of it at the time, and I knew little about the organization. The Incubator program helps potential ASF projects learn how to create a certain culture and community that encourages development and interaction.

This culture is created, in large part, by the Apache Way, a set of guiding principles and behaviors for projects within the ASF. One of the biggest keys to my success, thus far, in contributing to the Guacamole project is the concept of mentoring – not a behavior or principle officially outlined in Apache Way documents, but rather a byproduct of those principles. It seems that it is very human to be dismissive of people that don't measure up to our standard in some way or another, and my programming skills are, by far, the weakest of any of the current contributors to the Guacamole project. However, instead of ridicule or dismissal or discouragement, the other developers within the project have been accepting, helpful, and provided guidance.

And, as with any good education opportunity, they don't do this by giving me the answers or telling me how to do something, they do it by providing examples, references, and pointers that help me to think through the why and make my way to the how to write better code. The result? I still wouldn't rely on my programming skills for my day job, but I've come a long way in the 18 months that I've been a part of the project, and the code I write today is better than when I started.

Finally, this involvement actually makes me better at my day job. Not only does it give me a stronger appreciation for the effort that goes into writing the software that I use on a regular basis, but, more practically, it gives me a stronger set of skills for debugging problems and tracking down bugs that occur. I'm better able to locate the actual cause of problems, provide useful descriptions of those problems, and interact with the software engineers and developers in various places responsible for writing, improving, and supporting those applications.

At this point, my involvement with The Apache Software Foundation is limited to the Guacamole project, and will probably stay that way for the foreseeable future, but it's great to be involved with an organization and community that has a very diverse community of developers and projects, and know that, should I choose to add another challenge to my life, there are other projects out there that would welcome the involvement and would provide similarly positive experiences in helping me grow in my ability to give back to the open source community. If you're itching to dust off or learn some programming skills then I encourage you to look at the many available Apache Software Foundation projects available and jump into one of the communities. You'll almost certainly want to join one of the mailing lists for the project and your involvement can grow from there.

Nick Couchman is a Senior Linux Systems Engineer and Technical Team Lead for a major cosmetics conglomerate, and spends his days trying to convince everyone that they should run more Linux and less...other stuff. He spends his evenings with his family and increasingly small amounts of free time contributing to the Apache Guacamole project, learning how to write C, Java, and JavaScript.

Apache Calcite™ Avatica Go –a framework for building database drivers that defines a wire API and serialization mechanism for clients to communicate with a server as a proxy to a database. - Apache Calcite Avatica Go 3.0.0 released https://calcite.apache.org/

For real-time updates, sign up for Apache-related news by sending mail to announce-subscribe@apache.org and follow @TheASF on Twitter. For a broader spectrum from the Apache community, https://twitter.com/PlanetApache provides an aggregate of Project activities as well as the personal blogs and tweets of select ASF Committers.

When the ASF incorporated in 1999, its core membership comprised 21 individuals who oversaw the progress of the Apache HTTP Server. This group grew with Committers --developers who contributed code, patches, or documentation, and were subsequently granted access by the Membership:

to "commit" or "write" (contribute) directly to the code repository;

the right to vote on community-related decisions; and

the ability propose an active user for Committership.

Those Committers who demonstrate merit in the Foundation's growth, evolution, and progress are nominated for ASF Membership by existing Members.